I have a new article in the Winter issue of Notre Dame Magazine, which is now available. Click here to see my piece about the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s return to Notre Dame before disbanding. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Wrapped in a skin-tight, light blue costume, the young dancer contorts his body in a series of complex phrases that have become synonymous with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The strain of flesh pressing against wood can be heard from the balcony as Madoff stretches his foot across the stage in the opening solo of “Suite for Five,” the same piece Cunningham himself first danced some 55 years earlier at Notre Dame’s Washington Hall.

It’s no coincidence that this piece, originally titled “Suite for Five in Space and Time,” was chosen to open the program performed November 10-12 at Notre Dame’s Marie P. DeBartolo Performing Arts Center (DPAC) in the final weeks of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s two-year Legacy Tour.

I’m happy to announce that I took First Place in the Feature Story category in the 2011 Michigan Press Association Better Newspaper Contest for my profile on author Michael Collins and his work with other young writers at Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac, Mich., which appeared in The Herald-Palladium.

Members of the Colorado Press Association judged this year’s contest, which included 2,542 entries published from April 1, 2010, to March 31, 2011, that were submitted by 102 Michigan newspapers. The Herald-Palladium competes in the MPA’s Daily Class C category for newspapers with a daily paid circulation of 15,000 to 29,999.

The award will be presented on Jan. 28, 2012, during the MPA’s Annual Convention at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids.

You can read the article, titled Passion & Purpose, in the Portfolio section of this site.

Can you produce a masterwork of fiction in a mere 72 hours? The 3-Day Novel Contest is your chance to find out. The contest has run every Labor Day Weekend since 1977 and now attracts writers from all over the world.

The 34th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest takes place Sept. 3-5 this year. The first-place prize is publication. Second place gets $500, and third place gets $100.

I’ve written a short piece on this unusual event that appears in the Take Note section of the August issue of The Writer, one of my favorite national writing magazines.

Although the Take Note section isn’t posted online, you can find the link to the issue’s table of contents here.

I have two new articles in the Summer issue of Notre Dame Magazine, which is now on newsstands. Click here to see my piece about the Browning Cinema, one of a handful of THX-certified movie houses on college campuses, and how cinema manager Ted Barron sees the Browning’s role as both an education and entertainment venue at Notre Dame. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Since opening its doors in September 2004, the Browning Cinema has gone well beyond typical movie-house fare to become both an entertainment and educational hub for Notre Dame and the surrounding community. …  It hosts, on average each academic year, at least 15 distinct film series and 60 world or regional premieres. …  And it has hosted such notable filmmakers and actors as Tim Robbins, Phil Donahue ’57 and Sean Astin, to name a few.

Click here to see my piece about Notre Dame alumnus Gus Zuehlke who has founded the technology-based nonprofit BOSCO that is giving a voice to refugees in northern Uganda. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Zuehlke was struck by the unsanitary conditions, the isolation, and the stories of loss and survival. He also was awe-struck at the people of faith there. He met and befriended Gulu’s archbishop, John Baptist Odama, who would become a critical figure in negotiating a truce in July 2006, and he visited the scores of commuter children who left their villages each night to sleep in the city shelter so they wouldn’t be abducted or killed by the rebels.

The Winter issue of Notre Dame Magazine is out. Click here to see my piece about Global Issues and the United Nations, a class that uses Notre Dame’s portable Polycom video conferencing system to link students to U.N. members where they can get a better understanding of world matters from hunger and international migration to the governance of the U.N. Security Council. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“I can tell them how people outside our country might interpret U.S. policies, but when they hear somebody from another country give them a perspective on their own country — that can be really insightful,” says Jackie Smith, an associate professor of sociology and fellow of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, who has taught the course since arriving at the University in 2005.

I’ve sold another short article to The Writer. Look in the November issue of the magazine for my piece on The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, which will celebrate the centennial birthday of the acclaimed playwright as well as its own 25th anniversary March 23-27, 2011.

Williams, who won Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, was born March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Miss., but moved to New Orleans, where he changed his name from Thomas to Tennessee, in 1939. His other notable works include The Glass Menagerie and The Night of the Iguana.

Here’s a link to the magazine.

My short piece on the new Elmore Leonard Literary Arts and Film Festival appears in the Take Note section of the September issue of The Writer, one of my favorite national writing magazines.

You can find the link to the issue here.

The Summer issue of Notre Dame Magazine is out today. Click here to see my story about the growing push for scholarly, undergraduate achievement. Here’s an excerpt:

While the concept of undergraduate research has been around for decades, a national trend has intensified in recent years that encourages more undergraduates to take on complex research topics — often while abroad — complete a senior thesis, and seek out competitive grant and fellowship money for such scholarly pursuits.

Behind the trend lies a concern that college students aren’t getting the skills they need to compete in the 21st century global economy. This year’s Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education concluded that too many undergraduate students disengage, drop out or fail to master the reading, writing and thinking skills necessary for a successful future.

I’m pleased to report that I’ve sold a short piece on the new Elmore Leonard Literary Arts and Film Festival to The Writer, one of my favorite national writing magazines.

I’m told the piece will appear in the Take Note section of the September issue. It’s my first piece for the this particular title - I’m hoping the first of many.

I’ll post a link when it comes out.

I’m in the process of posting some of my best work from the first half of this year and the bulk of 2009. If you glance at the portfolio section you will now find my story on author Michael Collins titled “Passion & Purpose,” the story about cremated human remains that have never been picked up titled “Left behind,” and the piece about organ donation told through the eyes of a mother whose teenage son was killed in an car crash titled “The Gift of Life.”